Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Craaaaaazy

You know I like to listen to talk radio from time to time. What can I say? It amuses me. So I was glad to have a meeting across town this morning, because it meant being in my car during the Glen Beck show, which I've long heard was its own unique brand of high-octane crazy.

Oh. My. God.

I can only imagine the poor intern who's in charge of wringing out the spittle-soaked mic during commercial breaks. His rants are long flights of fancy, completely ungrounded by argument, reason, or fact. He does voices. He's the Tracey Ullman of right-wing talk radio. It really is impressive, but in the end, there's no there there.

The best example I can think of, though, isn't precisely from the show. It's the ads. On most of the talk radio shows, they advertise gold brokers, and their value proposition is that, when the markets tank, you'll be glad to have invested in gold as a bulwark against bankruptcy.

On the Glenn Beck show, they advertise seed banks of non-hybridized seeds that you can use to start your own "crisis garden", and their value proposition is that they make excellent barter material when civilization collapses. Seriously.

My absolute favorite thing on the seed bank's web site is the Boule d’Or Melon, which they say "contain significant amount of natural lithium".